Woman Calls Cops On Black Child For Doing His Newspaper Round

Bmai Love/Facebook

11-year-old Uriah Sharp was out on his very first paper round, a significant moment for many kids and the first taste of freedom.

Beaming for his mother’s photographs, Uriah, from Ohio, looked proud, happy and completely adorable as he held a newspaper aloft.

Uriah was accompanied by his 17-year-old brother Mycah and their mother Brandie, who was keen to teach her sons the value of hard work.

As the family set out on their route in the neighbourhood of Upper Arlington, nobody could have predicted what an upsetting turn such an innocent pre-teen milestone would take…

Bmai Love/Facebook

As many paper boys and girls have done before him, Uriah got a bit confused and delivered a few papers to the wrong homes by mistake.

Uriah grabbed the papers he’d brought to the wrong houses, before redelivering them to the correct ones. And you would have thought this would have been the end of a very small, forgettable matter.

However, a woman in the neighbourhood regarded Uriah’s actions as ‘suspicious’ and – rather than go chat to the family – actually rang the police.

According to ABC6, the woman’s telephone complaint went something like this:

It looked like at first they were delivering newspapers or something, but I noticed they were walking up to the houses with nothing in hand and one of them came back with something.

I mean, I don’t want to say something was going on, but it just…but it just seemed kind of suspicious.

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A police officer did indeed show up and questioned Brandie and her boys about what they were up to. It quickly became clear to the officer that this was indeed just a paper round.

Brandie told ABC6:

I showed him the thing for the Dispatch, The Bag, the midday week paper, that we get.

He said ‘Oh, really?’ and by that time I was kind of like, ‘Okay, why are you questioning me about this?

She added:

What was suspicious at 5:30 in the evening? What was this big, you know, reasoning that you had to call the police?

Something as simple as delivering papers and it turns out to be I have to be racially profiled?

Understandably shaken by the incident, Brandie shared her experience over Facebook through a post which has since gone viral:

First day of paper route and we are pulled over by police…Sad I cant even teach my son the value of working without someone whispering and looking at us out the side of their eye perhaps because we DON’T ‘look like a person that belongs in their neighbourhood.’

Police officer pulls up and ask us questions as if we were intruding in their area. Totally disgusted and disturbed that this kind of behavior still exist.

***My apologies Upper Arlington for bringing my 12 year old African American son into your neighborhood to deliver the paper and make a few dollars on the side…NO HARM INTENDED

I will make sure my boss changes his route.

Officer Bryan McKean, from Upper Arlington police, told ABC6:

We sent an officer out to take a look at it,

I would say to anyone who feels like their interaction with us was not professional and not to the highest standard, to contact us directly.

Uriah is reportedly still keen to help his mother out, however he has been left feeling very uncomfortable about the incident.

What a sad world it is when a person finds themselves the target of racial discrimination at the age of just 11 years old.

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Julia Banim

Jules studied English Literature with Creative Writing at Lancaster University before earning her masters in International Relations at Leiden University in The Netherlands (Hoi!). She then trained as a journalist through News Associates in Manchester. Jules has previously worked as a mental health blogger, copywriter and freelancer for various publications.